


A Widow's Sorrow

by JangMiTheBee



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Literary Teasing, Non-protagonist Original Character(s), Original Character(s), Slow Burn, Testing audience reaction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 07:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14279523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JangMiTheBee/pseuds/JangMiTheBee
Summary: Widowmaker, formerly known as Amélie Lacroix, is sent on a mission to kill the elusive Hanzo Shimada, but what they have in common may force both of them to examine their lives and find peace through each other and most importantly through themselves.





	1. The Widow's Sight (Prologue)

     ‘It’s a shame, really,’ Widowmaker mused to no one in particular, being alone and perched atop a skyscraper, ‘His skills would have been quite useful.’

     Satisfied by the wind’s noncommittal silence, she prepared her shot.It wasn’t going to be a particularly tough shot to make, but taking time was essential for her enjoyment.

_Am I really going to_ enjoy _this?_

     She shook her head, prying the thought from her mind, but it was too late.The doubt had been set; another kill marred by the lingering thoughts of Amélie.She wasn’t supposed to feel anything, that was the point.Chalking it up to another error in her new life, Widowmaker regretted the loss of joy in the upcoming kill, but knew surely that the satisfaction of it would be replacement enough.The show must go on and the preparations must be made, she told herself.

     Setting the grappling hook, she let herself down slowly, registering the wind as it coursed through her hair.Her eyes closed, she took in each step as her heels tapped the glass of the towering structure.The city bustled with noise.Buzzing conversations laced with the depth of emotion pervaded the cityscape intermingled with the tapping and bouncing of feet covered in shoes, boots, heels.The intermingled honk was not surprising, but instead at home in such a dense environment and very much expected.The cars themselves made very little sound, having been taken off gasoline for a long while at this point.What used to be growling had been replaced with a gentle purring, but with so much purring, the telltale sign of cars could still be heard distinctly.Seoul was lovely with sound.

     She had very much loved cities, and while she believed she could not do so again, a nagging desire continued to prod at her. _We still can._ She sighed, and the hope faded as quickly as it came.The target is what mattered right now and no amount of hope for the past would stop this mission from being executed.Drawing her breath in slowly, she switched her rifle into a sniper configuration, the sounds dying out as her concentration focused on the Hwang Security Company’s headquarters a mere few blocks away.The cold hard metal of the rifle felt natural in her hands, an extension of who she was and would continue to be.Her finger lined the outside of the guard, waiting with patience to be placed on the trigger, but not yet.Everything must be lined up, and the target in sight before she even thought of being trigger ready.The butt pressed up against her shoulder, the pressure reminding her of the weight of the job to come.No it didn’t, she told herself, a task is a task.The weight was merely that, pressure placed on her shoulder and one that was necessary for a job well done.

     She finally opened her eyes and looked into the scope, the building in view, but the target still not in the crosshairs.She clicked the zoom once to get an idea of the floor she needed to see.A blur just on the outside of the lens before the zoom completed.Probably nothing, just a decal on the building she hadn’t been paying enough attention to.Be more careful next time, she thought, but for now; the target.The meeting had been going on for a while now, but not so long that she would have missed her window.She had counted on bureaucracy to keep him still until the right moment and she was not disappointed.

     Hanzo Shimada was doing his best to not be found by his family, which was why it was so hard to track him down in the first place, and Widowmaker found it to be odd that he was even considering a deal with a Korean protection agency.It turned out to be his undoing since it was this deal that uncovered his whereabouts in the first place.Not that it mattered, whatever deal it waswould be moot in a matter of minutes.She believed the why of things should always be left to those who cared about them in the first place.She was made to not care, so why start now?Despite Talon’s many attempts at recruiting the prodigal Shimada, he turned them down handily, disappearing as soon as he appeared, not to be found until he wanted to be found and now he was considered expendable like many others.

     The meeting ended and Widowmaker breathed the last time before she went to take the shot, her crosshair now squarely on exactly where Hanzo’s head would be and the shot was charged for a killing blow.Her finger glided gently to her trigger and she knew his end was only a few steps away.Three steps.Two steps.One step.A smiling, wooden face filled the scope.

     Everything about her focus shattered, she glanced to the side of the scope to see the cloaked figure holding onto a building and directly within her line of site of her target.A curse escaped her lips and it was gone.Her mind raced; Quickly, before he could-

     Her quick thinking would have killed Hanzo Shimada, with her scope minutely tuned and the crosshair on his heart and her finger quicker than a snap, were it not for the armored hand that now covered her rifle’s barrel.She glared at it in condemnation as the smoke wafted around his palm, an instant reminder of a failed mission.When she had her fill of disappointment, she looked up and the wooden tal mask that should have been jovial seemed, at this particular moment, distant, cold and cruel.It vanished yet again and she felt a tug on her wire.She looked up to see the figure turn and walk away from the edge of the building, and when she activated the grappling hook she was flung up back to the roof of the skyscraper.

     ‘He was in my sights,’ Widowmaker growled.

     ‘The mission parameters have changed,’ said the figure with a moderately distorted voice, ‘the target is to be tracked.This is only the first meeting of many, and new intel suggests that he’ll be joining up with the newly reformed Overwatch.This is the perfect opportunity to find and eliminate some agents… as well as the prodigal.’

     The anger that had gotten the better of her vanished with the new information, not that she should have felt that way in the first place.So he was to be of some use after all. _And he lives just a while longer_.For their own gain in the end, and he still dies. _Living is living, even if for a brief moment.I’ll take it where we can get it._ It mattered not, now there would be more deaths.Talon sought to reshape the world, and omelettes require- o _h don’t start with that one again, what good is a better world through terror?_ A world where the weak were not trampled underfoot, taken and repurposed.The lingering wisps had no retort, but they didn’t leave.They never did.

     ‘Very well, then I shall take first watch,’ and being satisfied with the adjusted mission, Widowmaker began to prepare her grappling hook for the journey when a light touch startled her.

     ‘That won’t be necessary, I’ve already made the preparations to follow him from this point on,’ he said.The touch puzzled Widowmaker.She hadn’t been on more than a few missions with Tal, but everything about the man, whatever kind of man he really was, had seemed distant and dedicated to the task at hand.The light touch seemed sincere and unobtrusive and unlike anything she knew of him, but before she could comment or react in any way he told her, ‘You should go back to the safe room and rest, we’ll convene with the rest of the team there in the morning.’

     Tal had vanished as quickly as he came, seemingly stepping behind a cloaked wall.He was not a recent addition to Talon’s group, but he was certainly the one Widowmaker saw the least of, in any case.It seemed that he handled what even Talon considered black ops and she figured, if anyone had anything on him that wasn’t mission critical, it would have been Sombra.She couldn’t count on Sombra at the moment since the two were on missions on opposite ends of the world, but she made a mental note to check in with whatever the hacker could find on their next meeting.In the meantime she had to trust Tal, however shrouded his motives may have been.She could see him dance from building to building as he pursued his target until at last, it seemed there was no trace of him at all. 

     She did, however, trust that he would keep an eye on Hanzo.It wasn’t until she thought of him as a target to pursue did other gears start turning in her head.Thoughts centered around what she had been told of the stoic Japanese man.He had killed his own brother, or at least he thought he did.What were his own feelings about his actions?Did he regret them?Did those thoughts keep him up at night, plagued by ghosts of guilt and remorse?

_Like me?_

     She should have shut the feeling down, shoved it aside at least.This was the kind of thing that made someone bad at their job, the thing that brought back memories.Memories of a lack of control.Memories of a loved one.Memories of a life long past.

     ‘Yes, like me.’


	2. The Dragon's Flight (Prologue)

     As Hanzo Shimada walked down the busy street, amidst the towering trunks of the Seoul skyscrapers, he felt as if he was walking into some kind of tangled web that would leave him utterly helpless.It was a thought that buzzed in and out of his mind like a fly dancing about fresh meat at an open market.He almost always felt this way in public, but it seemed to be all the more present without the weight of even a concealed weapon.Especially this close to home.He doubted that any of the Shimada’s hired thugs would even attempt an open attack in a foreign country, but there were always alleys and what if they tracked him to where he was staying?Public opinion mattered to some extent, but collateral was something the Shimadas did not pay close attention to.But he could take them in any case.It was not the thugs he was concerned about.It was the Talon watchdogs he knew would be on him at all times for the next few days.He had not seen them, but he knew they were there.Perhaps the Widowmaker was sent for him, even if she had no widow to make in this instance.But she was one of the Talon agents he was told that might have been following him.

     He had a brief meeting with Talon’s sniper previously while he was scrounging in the United States.It would have been relatively cordial if it were not for the plethora of unconscious Talon agents before the pretense of a meeting had been established.They had referred to the conflict as a test at the time, but Hanzo was sure they only considered his employment afterwards.But even if they hadn’t he had a feeling that the blue-skinned femme fatale would have been almost too much to deal with in combat by himself.Her cold demeanor had left him with chills and he had made it a goal of his to avoid contact lest they should decide that he was easily expendable instead of useful.Yet here he was, effectively drawing a bullseye on his back to anyone looking for him.After all, that was part of the plan and the reason why he had so easily revealed his location to all who were looking.But he knew that where there was one stalker, there was another protector.

     The money helped, but it was the chance of redemption for his deeds that got him to agree to such a grandiose plan, since Overwatch already had very little to offer him besides time to speak with his brother, Genji.If it really was Genji.Hanzo had his doubts, but it was the only way to make sure that the man or machine was, as he claimed to be, the brother that Hanzo had thought dead.

_The brother you meant to kill, you mean._

     It was a voice he long held onto, the guilt of his actions.A voice that never went away, no matter how many times he prayed to Genji’s memory.He had asked for forgiveness, wasted time begging to be free of the voice.To live a normal life after all of these years.But such cries were met with silence and the voice lived on, a painful cut in his mind of the terrible thing he had done.

_He told you to forgive yourself,but can you really?_

     The voice was something he had long pushed aside, and this time was no different.All it took was a little focus and it was gone for the time being.Though he had to admit, it was far easier with a task to focus on.And shadows of the past could wait, because the only thing that Hanzo needed to focus on was the shadow that was dogging his every step.He knew that the stalker was good, but clearly whatever they were, they were making mistakes.A flash of them there, rippling shadows there, and distinct footsteps poorly concealed.If he hadn’t been constantly pursued by assassins, he would have missed those signs.He thought to consider himself lucky, if being on the run for half of his life could be lucky.It didn’t matter, because it was helping him now.He knew that the stalker would not make a move until the right moment and while the plan was not to lose them, he had no doubt they’d just pick his path in a few days at the latest.However, he wished for one night of untethered peace at least.He knew it would be easy as well, in such a crowded city.The suffocating mass of bodies moving this way and that would be the perfect cover once the stalker inevitably stumbled.

     He hated cities.They always seemed so noisy, the density of so many people put him on edge.The idea that any one of them could be after him only emphasized how on edge he was surrounded by people.It was the individualism that bothered him the most.Now matter how big a crowd was, each person had their own motivations, their own movements, and none of them seemed to understand that the others had the same.There was so much hustling and bustling where there should have been fluid movement.The noise never stopped, a constant white noise of people talking about as gracefully as they moved.To Hanzo, at least.Each person had their place and each needed to make it known to others, not fulfill it.Such a mass of fools bothered Hanzo to no end, but they could be used for a purpose.

     That was when his opportunity opened up.There was an accidental stumble of a deliberate step, a hasty apology and that was when Hanzo disappeared into an alley way.He moved as quickly and deftly as cat, making no fuss among the tides.The building may have been older but had been updated to the standards of the time, and this afforded him a fire escape upon which Hanzo launched himself up from the wall with his feet, pawing his hands along the wall.He sprung himself from the wall and caught the railing, and stole his way into the building itself through an unlocked window after he climbed up a flight of stairs.Even if anyone saw him achieve such a feat, they would have thought they saw a ghost that vanished as soon as it was seen.He was sure to not move on from the location until he felt that the shadow had vanished, but something inside him told him that perhaps this was part of the plan to just make him drop his guard.That showed what Talon thought of him, as he never dropped his guard. 

     After passing his time listening to the city’s grumblings, he felt satisfied enough to go further into the building, so he could exit through the front door.It was late enough that the occupants were asleep, so he decided to be careful with his steps as he stole through the slightly unkempt apartment.It wasn’t as if the family was starving, it seemed they were well off enough, but there seemed to be a lack of careful cleaning.He couldn’t help but take a closer look.There was a sleeping mat on the floor, one that would have been stored away to give the floor more space while the family was awake.Upon it were two breathing bodies underneath the blankets, one smaller than the other.A mother and her child, Hanzo gathered from the photos along the dressers.There was a man he assumed was the mother’s husband.Hanzo wondered where he might be?Still at work, out drinking.

_Probably dead.I wonder how he died?Murdered?_

     He focused on pushing the voice aside, but allowing himself to indulge it, he decided to take a closer look.He knew he shouldn’t, he had done this to himself too many times already, but he couldn’t help it.He didn’t look at everything, but then again, he didn’t need to.There were dirty dishes in the sink; a late dinner then a rushed bed time.On the counter was a prepared lunch, and hanging along a closet was a freshly ironed outfit that Hanzo presumed was for school.From what he could see, the mother’s clothes seemed to be older, not quite as crisp.And no amount of sleep would remove the bags from under her eyes.Hanzo shut the door behind him and waited until it auto-locked.

     As he walked out of the building, he looked back.He hadn’t been paying attention when he was trying to get out of the stalker’s gaze, but now that he saw the building, he saw that it was one even older than he had thought.Thought he knew it meant nothing, he hoped that family would have an easier time moving forward.But knowing that only hoping for another’s well being just seemed to make his heart heavier every time.

     He stared up at the signage upon the building, its light falling upon his face in a cloud of color.The thick purple bordering outlined red letters ‘그란드 타워’.It covered the length of the building, a beacon of the somewhat shabby building, its concrete stained by the city’s influence.He lingered for a few moments, allowing himself to meditate under the wash of the neon light while the city continued to move on without his presence, if only for that brief moment.Rain had been falling upon his face, but it was only just after he started to pay attention to his surroundings that he noticed.The water dripped down from his face, as he turned and walked further from the heart of the city.

     He hadn’t made it twenty steps when he heard a voice softly speak inaudible, and a gentle tap.While in any other case Hanzo would have instantly taken the offender into a grip, he had known this man was coming for him and the tap seemed harmless, as one would have done when asking for directions.If he assaulted everyone who touched him, half of the city would be on the ground, knocked out cold.The Korean man was dressed simply, he wore a black suit vest over a white button-up shirt.His trench coat was open, and the umbrella over his head was emblazoned with a samtaegeuk.In an outstretched hand he offered another umbrella, and from what Hanzo could see cherry blossoms were printed on it.

     'Sorry for the intrusion,' the man said.

     ‘I did not expect for you to meet me out in the open, you told me that a meeting would compromise the mission,’ Hanzo said, ‘did something change?’

     ‘Nothing,’ the man replied, ‘but I would have expected you to have lost the one who is supposed to be tailing you for you to have stood out in the open for so long.’

     Hanzo chuckled at that, knowing how foolish he must have looked and took the umbrella, opening it.They definitely were cherry blossoms. ‘Is this supposed to be a joke, agent?’

     ‘Was in a hurry, sorry,’ the man said, ‘And please, I’m not really an agent, call me Park Kyeong Ja, or just Park if you’d rather.’

     ‘And why the early meeting?I thought we were meant to join up at the apartment.I believe that is still 40 minutes away from here,’ Hanzo said, picking up the conversation while they walked to the bus station.

     ‘Don’t worry, I’m not sticking around for long, I have an errand to run, but I wanted to let you know that Genji is in town,’ said Park Kyeong Ja, turning from Hanzo to walk in the opposite direction, twirling on his feet to face him as he backed up, ’and we’ll be moving ahead with the schedule as it is.I’ll be right behind you, but in case I don’t make it back until the next rendezvous; don’t be late, they’ll be expecting you’

     And with that he turned again, melding with the crowd, discernible only by the brightly colored umbrella.Hanzo held those words on his mind as he got on the bus.The bus rumbled off and Hanzo walked his way to the back and sat in the corner, looking out at the cityscape as it drove towards his destination.The lights danced along his face as he sat mired in thought.

     So Genji was here.Or at least thebeing who claimed it was his dead brother.Some flesh encased in metal and it had the gall to call itself Genji.

_But what if that is Genji?_

     Hanzo decided not to shove the voice away; a long day had ended, and he was too tired to keep pushing it out for now.If that’s Genji then what’s become of him now?A life barely worth living for the Genji that Hanzo remembered.Only kept alive by machinery and a shadow of his former self.

_Then you did that to him._

     Hanzo’s thoughts drifted back to the sniper.When he signed up with Overwatch, Park Kyeong Ja had given him dossiers on the Talon agents who were most likely to be tailing him for the assignment.He had heard rumors, but most of them were sensationalized and it sobered him to read a detailed report.Amélie Lacroix had murdered her husband.Overwatch seemed to think it a turncoat offense, but Hanzo suspected some form of Talon foul play involved.After all the description of the woman Amélie was didn’t seem remotely close to the assassin he had encountered.She was cold, stoic and utterly sure of her actions.But to kill a loved one must have had some kind of toll on her.

_What, like you?_

     It was unlike him to indulge his inner shame for so long.He had told himself that this was what would have gotten him killed.Guilt was one thing, but emotions messed with one’s training.Empathy would kill him.Empathy would stop his blade when he needed it.

     Hanzo looked out the window, rain streaking across the window, ‘Like me’.


End file.
